BEIRUT opens before the Lebanese Civil War with U.S. diplomat Mason Skiles (Jon Hamm), on the last good day of his life, using a brilliant analogy to explain the political situation in Lebanon to his party guests in that eponymous city. Even the way the guests have arranged themselves, as Skiles put it: Christians on… Read More »
NOSTALGIA
Click here for the flashback interview with Mark Pellington for THE LAST WORD. Polynesians have a word for the power with which we imbue inanimate objects. Manu. There are supernatural overtones to the word’s meaning in its original sense, but the power that objects have for the characters in Mark Pellington’s NOSTALGIA, if not strictly… Read More »
BLACK PANTHER
BLACK PANTHER is the standard by which all other superhero movies this year will be measured. Maybe this decade. Showcasing the expected show-stopping special effects, a rich mythology from the Marvel comic on which it is based, and plenty of rousing action that is both imaginative (weaponized rhinoceroses) and genuinely suspenseful, it gets the most… Read More »
THE ALIENIST
Meticulous in its detail, and lush in its recreation of 19th-century New York City, TNT’s 10-part adaptation of Caleb Carr’s The Alienist is on a par with Martin Scorsese’s similar cinematic visits to that period in THE AGE OF INNOCENCE and GANGS OF NEW YORK. While those films separated the mighty and the downtrodden, THE… Read More »
HOSTILES
HOSTILES is a film that takes itself very seriously. It should. Taking as its themes both human nature’s capacity for violence and its overweening need for mercy, it is not something to be approached lightly, something that director Scott Cooper took to heart in his adaptation of the late Donald E. Stewart’s manuscript. Set in… Read More »
ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD
The rich, as the oft-quoted saw goes, are different. That is the central premise of ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD, a cautionary tale of money and family. The moving force, though only a supporting player in the proceedings, J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer), who at one point reminisces about a book he wrote entitled… Read More »
JUSTICE LEAGUE
JUSTICE LEAGUE is a film with many problems. Some are inherent in an origin-style story that introduces several characters to what the filmmakers hope will be an audience eager to follow their further, individual, adventures. Some are just inexplicable. Take the plot device that is nothing short of asinine, and which I can’t discuss without… Read More »
LOVING VINCENT
The subjects of Vincent Van Gogh’s masterpieces come to startling, vivid, and enchanting life in LOVING VINCENT, a film of enormous beauty and sharp insight. Created by rotoscoping actors, and then painting each animation cell by hand in oils, the result is an immersive experience of how the artist saw the world while also questioning… Read More »
MOTHER!
From his debut feature, PI, Darren Aronofsky’s work has never strayed far from the metaphysical. There was the overt Kabbalah that infused NOAH, and even REQUIEM FOR A DREAM was as much about the psychic destruction of souls as it was about any physical degradation of the protagonists. And so it is with MOTHER!, an… Read More »
IT
The evil that lurks in the sewers beneath Derry, Maine, has nothing on the evil lurking in the homes of that community.
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